My extroversion is a way of managing my introversion.
― Carrie Fisher
Humans are social animals. We’ve always needed a group to be able to survive, but also to ensure the reproduction and success of the species. “Hermit” is not a successful evolutionary life-strategy. Social contacts are needed at some point to ensure the posterity of the species. In nature, some species are semi-solitary, living most of their lives alone but meeting up with other individuals every now and then to reproduce. Humans are not like that. Throughout evolution, we have lived in groups; we are what we are because we live in groups. Even our brain developed in a specific way to cope with the complexity of our social environment. Our need for social contact goes beyond reproduction and is one of our core needs. But it doesn’t mean we all enjoy or require the same amount of social contacts.
Need for social contacts can be seen as a continuum. On one side, we find hermits who will avoid human contact at all cost, living in remoteness and keeping to themselves. The company of other people is for them incredible tiring and they’d rather keep the company of plants and animals than humans. On the other side, we find the social-cravers who would go to extreme length to avoid being alone and have a need for contact every waking moment. The thing about extremes, they are pretty rare. Some people will indeed find big groups of people incredibly daunting and tiring, preferring keeping the company of a few selected friends, while others will thrive in big social groups and enjoy the animation and the noise they generate. Those are personal differences that can be linked to your personality.
In a previous post, I defined personality as that which predicts what a person will do in a given situation. It is therefore the characteristics specific to an individual, that will help explain how and why they react a certain way in given contexts. Personalities are characterised using five dimensions: Conscientiousness, Agreeableness, Neuroticism, Openness, and Extraversion. Each of those dimensions will contribute to an aspect of our personality. The one that will determine our need for social contact is the latter: extraversion. Extraverted people (people with a high extraversion scores) tend to be loud, outgoing, authoritative, energetic, and thriving in loud work places like open spaces. Introverted people (with low extraversion scores) tend to be quiet, preferring nights in to clubs, enjoy alone time, and need less stimuli to feel fulfilled.
Not only will our extraversion score determine the level and type of social contact we need to fill fulfilled, it has been shown to be linked to our wellbeing (huh?). Wellbeing can be seen as the extent to which our life is going well; it is a measure of happiness and success, real or perceived. Throughout years and decades of study, personality psychologists have revealed that extraverted people report feeling happier and more positive in general than introverted people, leading to higher wellbeing. Correlation does not mean causation though, i.e., it is not because two things tend be observed together that one results from the other. In other words, once psychologists confirmed the correlation between high extraversion score and high happiness/wellbeing, they had to test whether wellbeing changed depending to different extraversion scores (“to the laaaaaaab” as one of my friends would say).
A first wave of studies showed that acting in a more extraverted fashion during short-term social interactions (couple of minutes typically) led to higher positive feelings. Great, but not enough. What psychologists really wanted to find out was whether our personality could impact our wellbeing and whether we could change our personality to improve our wellbeing. To test this, two research teams took their studies outside of the lab and collected data throughout a whole week. Both studies shared common specificities: they sent their participants out to live their lives but gave them instructions to change their social behaviours to act more extraverted or push participants to engage in social interactions without being more extraverted (first study-2018); or they asked participants to act more extraverted one week and more introverted the second week (second study-2019). Both research teams asked participants to fill out questionnaires about their behaviours and affective experiences (what they did and how they felt about it) multiple times a day/week, as well as to complete a retrospective questionnaire for participants to look back at the past week and reflect on their experiences.
Overall, both studies found that acting like extroverts was associated with reporting more positive emotions, both in the moment and in retrospect… specially for the extraverted people. Indeed, the first study (2018) revealed that the introvert participants reported momentary increase in positive emotions, when looking back they did not find the experience enjoyable. Not only did they report lower authenticity (they felt like they were putting on an act and did not feel natural), they also reported feeling more tired, not because they had more (quantity) social interactions but because of the nature (quality) of the interactions they had in the past week. The second study (2019) did not report such effect; however, they found that during their “introvert week” participant reported lower positive emotions and they felt less connected.
Taken together, I think both studies provide promising results. The take-home message is not that acting as an extravert will increase everybody’s wellbeing. The take-home message is that a little extraversion here and there can do you good. It is really important to take into account the personality and social tendencies of people taking part in studies. Not everyone will need the same level of extraversion to feel good. Not everybody will find happiness in intense social interactions. The genuineness of the interaction, as well as the authenticity of the exchanges, are for me what makes great social time.
No need to push your introvert friends into intense social contacts. Give them the opportunity to come to you when they want and offer a hint of extraversion every once in a while. There is an introvert in most of us, some of us are just better at socialising them than others.
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